Are you going to vote for Barack Obama or are you a racist?
Fortunately, your comment is modded funny. Unfortunately, the polls indicate that the other side of the coin is a reality. I'm not criticizing any black person for doing that, given the history of this country and their people, but it doesn't change the fact that there are many black people that admit they are voting for him just because he's black. I'm not sure if that's a good thing for the advancement of black people or not.
Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.
Sadly, we'd probably be better served if most people did that. Most people aren't informed enough about anything of real consequence to have an opinion that is worth consideration. The Constitution has no right to vote. There's a reason for that.
There's only one poll that counts. And it wraps up polling next Tuesday. Keep in mind that during the primary, all the polls had Obama winning New Hampshire. The closest had him with a 5% lead. Don't be shocked if this is closer (or even in a completely different direction) than the media is reporting it.
They're selling drama. The polls are all over the place. Polls != election results.
The same thing would be said from someone else if something was posted as an "Independent Analysis" from Fox News. ALL media has bias. The difference is degree and direction. The GP is correct, though. The NYT does tend to slant to the left. I'd take a look at what FN & NYT both say and figure that the "truth" is somewhere in the middle.
At the bottom of this first page of the report is a graph showing what "most" actually is, 70%. So only 30% of US corporations generally pay ANY tax in a given year according to the GAO.
So again, why shouldn't we be clamouring for rich people and corporations to be paying up like the rest of us?
I'm not familiar with the report, but I'm just curious as to how many of those corporations are S-corps. I've got an S-corp myself that I setup simply to invest in small homes that need refurbishing and resell them to low income people at below market rates to expand availability of housing for people that might not otherwise be able to afford something of their own. Sure, I do it for profit, but I've never made more than $40k in a year at it. By the time all of my related expenses are figured into it, I virtually had no income for the corporation.
Corporations aren't all big behemoths without a human face. Mine is made up of only me. And, I'll also let you know that my corporation has never paid taxes ever. It's not that I haven't sent checks to the government. I did. But, the taxes were included in the markup on the houses I sold. So, the poor people I was trying to help are actually the ones that paid the taxes. Do you think Wal-Mart or X (pick your favorite boogey man) corporation does it any differently? The "little" people always pay corporate tax. Raise the rates, the prices will rise to make up the difference. It might make you feel good, but you're not screwing who you think you are.
But, to go back to deductions, I'm all for eliminating them all. The reason that things are so screwed is because the government has tried to control people's behaviour through the tax code. The give breaks for what they want people to do and penalize what they don't want. Simplify it and make it where I don't need to spend 2 months with an accountant at tax time to get my paperwork done and I'd be happy. Just lower those rates to make it a net even. Then, we'll all actually know who's paying what.
perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.
gone are the days when logistical obstacles prevented the public from directly participating in the legislative process. there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
Great idea on the surface. Sounds all utopian. Unfortunately, if EVERYONE gets to decide on EVERYTHING, we're screwed. The founders weren't fools. They understood that the majority of people would not have the capacity to understand the intricacies of the issues at hand to make proper choices. Back then, it also wasn't practical. But, the fact is, that we live in a society today where over 40% of the people think the Republicans are in charge of Congress. People are not informed enough to be given that responsibility. We will literally be screwed if we ever do something as insane as this.
I'm all for it if there's some standard for who gets to vote and for what. Unfortunately, most people in the US are only informed enough to choose who's the American Idol winner... and he's about to be president-elect.
A lawyer who has 1) grown up on welfare, 2) has shown at least some interest in returning balance to income inequality which threatens our entire culture, and 3) will replace the Bush Administration with a cabinet full of something besides the Bush Administration.
If the ABA were under government oversight, you could pressure your congressperson to change the way it runs, or cut their funding. Since it has no governmental oversight, all you can do is bitch. That's the "freedom" of unregulated but necessary industry - they're free to extort money, you're free to waste your breath complaining about it.
Ok... I'll bite...
1. Not sure what that has to do with anything. Sure, he grew up on welfare. He lives in a $1M+ house now. According to the logic of people that like to play the class warfare game, you don't get to that place in life without screwing people. So, what makes him better than the other multimillionaire running just because he USED to be poor.
2. He's only talking about attacking a symptom. "Income inequality" is not the core problem of our culture. It comes from a lack of opportunity. That lack of opportunity exists in the form of a third rate government monopoly (remember Slashdotters... monopolies are bad... not just with corporations) on education. That problem is even worse in poorer rural and urban areas. Add to that the social influences that teach people that if you're successful you must have cheated because no one can get ahead without being corrupt. So, young children who need a positive message more than any are brainwashed at a very young age that the deck is stacked against them, so there's no point to even try to educate yourself and attempt to achieve something in life.
You can take all the money from the "rich" and give it to the "poor". Within 5 years, the people with money to begin with will have it all back and those that didn't won't have any once again. Poverty is a psychological problem. If the psychology is never dealt with, things will never change. People like to talk about the materialism of capitalists, but it's really the socialists and communists that obsess over material wealth much more than capitalists. It's because the entire psychology of those perspectives are rooted in victimization and envy.
3. I'm absolutely no fan of Bush or really anything that he's done in his time. I never voted for him. I haven't voted for a single Republican for any office since 1998. And, I actually voted for Obama in the primary election. Still, the perspective that ANYTHING is better is quite irresponsible. We don't know what either of these politicians (that's ALL they are) are going to do when they get their hands on the reins. We're going to see, though. And only time will tell if that's better or not.
And the comment about government oversight, we've seen plenty of times how that works. Those without the campaign donations get the oversight. Those with don't. Putting the government in control is little better than just putting some corporation in control. Sure, you can argue that the government is accountable to the people. That's a wonderful theory, but not so effective in practice. In the end, the government is just another corporation run by a few elites. They allow us to have the illusion that we have influence, but when they want to do something, they can do it anyway. The real issue is that they can use guns to make you comply and you can't do anything about it.
There is no question that we are having SOME effect. The real question is how much, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
So to correct your earlier statement, it would be safe to say that the Cult of Al Gore is to the left what ID is to the right; global warming as a scientific field of study, though, has nothing in common with either. The fact that some political groups have hijacked the name, doesn't invalidate the science.
Well said... I won't even deal with the ID folks because it's not even worth commenting on. As for the Cult of Al Gore, they do a great disservice to people that are truly trying to understand the climate because they are arguing that there is already scientific "consensus" (which I never learned about when I was studying the scientific method) that man is causing all the change. The problem is, when you take the data from Al Gore's film that he presented that correlated temperature change and atmospheric CO2 percentages and actually put them on the same graph (instead of breaking them into 2 like Al did), you'll actually see that the increase in temperature PRECEEDS the rise in CO2. So, though there does definitely seem to be a correlation, the conclusion drawn by Al and his "church" seems to be false simply by looking at the data.
BTW... I'm not saying that CO2 isn't involved in the whole process of climate change. I'm just saying that anyone that has a real understanding of science would be horrified to think that we would be thinking about monkeying about with things without having a better understanding. Do we need to clean up our act? Hell yes. Are we effecting things? Chaos theory would say so. Do we know how much and in what way we're having an effect? I've yet to see anything that really can tell me that this is definitely not a cyclical phenomenon and is mostly a byproduct of human activity.
The problem is the chicken littles screaming the sky is falling because their computer models say the Earth is about to burst into flames (or whatever the catastrophy du jour happens to be). That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
Uh...guys? It's not who's freer, US or UK that varies, it's that both are going down the toilet quickly freedom wise.
Terrorism? I'm far more scared of the government.
I hear this a lot from the Slashdot crowd when it comes to information privacy and government misuse of information. It puzzles me, though, that many of the same people (not necessarily indicting parent here) fight and argue for expansion of government influence. One thing I'm specifically thinking of is government run health care. I'm just curious as to what these same people that argue against the patriot act think the government is going to do differently when they own their medical records.
You do what you can via modelling etc to try and predict the effects of any potential intervention. Then you try it on a limited scale, and try to confirm your models. If it seems good, you scale it up.
Great idea! We definitely need to model these things to understand what is going to happen first.
BTW... call me when the Weather Channel can actually give me an accurate forecast for next week. Then we can start working on a model that could be relied on to analyze the next decade.
There is too great an incentive for companies to dream up potentially damaging and idiotic ideas in order to secure lucrative government contracts to carry them out. The company then makes a large profit from screwing with the environment in a big way.
It's the same mechanism that results in companies having an incentive to push the country into war; massive mega-contracts that result in huge gains to that company at the severe detriment of everyone else.
Huge dollars going into mega projects like carbon sequestering attract morally bankrupt companies like Bechtel, companies who would strip mine the entire Amazon if they could make it profitable. They put together a reasonable sounding proposal, submit it to the bumbling idiots who call themselves our leaders along with a fat bribe and then go about reaping enormous profit using our tax dollars to fuck up the planet.
There are few things that anger me more than the privatization of social responsibility.
If it's government contracts, it's not privatization. It's outsourcing. Privatization would be the government removing itself from the whole process and leaving it to the market to deal with it.
While it might not be dealt with any better under privatization, you most likely wouldn't have schemesters getting big bucks from "bumbling idiots" in that case. Generally, only government can waste billions on those types of idiotic ideas. The market is too worried about profit.
Of course they do. You, personally, might not have voted for the incomptents that are pushing for this sort of thing/not actively working to make it illegal... But many of your peers did.
I'd say that in at LEAST 2/3rds of the conversations I've ever had with Americans about the 2nd amendment, they bring up the idea that a well armed populace will keep the government from doing illegal things, because the populace will call them to account.
I'm not suggesting that shooting people is the appropriate response to luggage being stolen, but I've never once gotten a satisfactory answer as to what will cause the people to rise up. It seems to me that the ability to own shitloads of guns hasn't been used very effectively over the history of the USA to enforce the constitution or the rights of human beings. It still might in the future, but I'm not optimistic. As long as American Idol is still playing, and Walmart is still selling clothes for cheap, the vast majority of the American people seem unwilling to risk their own comfortable lives over things like the contitution, their rights or more particularly, the rights of others.
The thing is, we don't have to start a bloody revolution to change things. The ENTIRE House of Representatives is up for election every two years. All budget bills must originate from the house. So, no money = no enforcement of whatever even if the Senate, Executive and Judicial branches disagree.
The problem is that everyone thinks all of congress is a bunch of criminals except for "their" guy. So, we keep sending the jerks back so we can keep watching American Idol...
I think it's ignorant and rude for you to suggest that liberals don't work as hard as conservatives, or don't love America as much. How do you know how hard I work? And how can you possibly see into my heart and tell me how much I love America? The fact is, you're simply spouting stereotypes that reflect your political bias.
You're correct there. It has nothing to do with the value you create personally in the economy. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, while making plenty of money and generating jobs upon jobs are still fairly liberal in their politics.
Yes. You are crazy. Ever hear of the Butterfly Ballot. If American voters can't handle making a single choice, how are they going to deal with multiple choices?
Well, given that I live in California, for my senator anyway, I am represented as 1 out of about 18 million. How much representation do you expect a single citizen to get?
If you have neither money nor the capability to inspire people, then enjoy your 1 in 18 million representation.
Actually, the original intent of the founders was that the Senate was to represent the state governments, not directly the people of the state. They were actually chosen by the state legislators until the 17th Amendment. That's why there was an even number allocated to each state regardless of population. The House of Representatives was supposed to be the people's representative body. And, if you run the numbers there, you'll find that each member of the house represents ~ 600-700k people since house delegations are appropriated by population. Still not a great number, but when you understand the original intent of the founders, it makes more sense. Of course, Americans don't understand much about the original intent of the founders (or anything else that doesn't involve the entertainment industry). So, they think we're supposed to directly vote for any elected official, damn the state governments and the 10th Amendment.
No, let's be fair. The blame is with those who voted them in.
I didn't vote for Bush in 2004, nor did I vote for Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) in 2006. What should I have done, other than vote for other candidates and encourage friends and family members to do the same?
Which illustrates the fundamental problem with a simple democracy... In an autocracy, you essentially have a ruler or small ruling class that becomes the tyrant. With democracy, it's the tyranny of the majority.
I'm not arguing in favor of either. What we really need is a reform of the election process. Instead of everyone selecting just one candidate that they want with the one receiving the majority of votes winning, we need to have a forced ranking system. There, voters would rank all the candidates in the order of most preferred to least preferred. The highest (or lowest depending on the system) average of voter rankings would then be elected to office.
That really gets to the true issue that we have in the US, which is the tyranny of the 2 party system. The Democans and Republicrats have a duopoly on the system, which forces the winner to be either someone that you really want or someone that you really don't want.
Of course, it's all just another pipe dream since our voters can't even deal with basic ballots like the infamous "Butterfly Ballot."
My smoking of weed while watching said movie also harms no one. It only harms me, and it's my body, therefore my choice how I treat it.
WRONG!!! Because it makes people actually enjoy watching crap like Clone Wars, thus more crap is produced. Drugs are destroying the entertainment industry and I certainly hope this new Copyright Czar will join forces with the Drug Czar to save Hollywood and the poor record companies being plagued by this scourge.
Large diesel transfer trucks use air brakes, which are charged by a compressor that is run by the engine. Using the brakes discharges the stored air. If the compressor is not powerful enough and the brakes are used too much, the pressure will drop resulting in a loss of braking power. A compressed air braking system will still be subject to issues of heating the rotors, but the air pressure has to also be maintained to keep the brakes working. Otherwise, why would they need low air pressure warnings on trucks with those systems?
Diesels specifically do it for longevity and safety when going down steep hills, as well.
The big ones also do it because there's only so much air stored up for air braking. You don't want to waste it in case you really need it in an emergency.
First they find the monogomy gene and then they find the baldness gene. How much longer before women insist on genetic pre-screening before they put out?
So, you're saying the Bolsheviks intended to create a Libertarian society? Communism is nowhere near Libertarianism.
The problem with Libertarian is that it is too free. That leaves a weak government and a lot of rich/powerful people that want control without controls against them. Then they take over. Then the Libertarian government fails.
Too free? So, you're arguing for a strong government, which if I'm correct, history has illustrated only grows in strength until it reaches totalitarianism. I'd much rather have a government that failed than one that could never fail. Because, if it can fail, the people running it know that. Then instead of rich and powerful people that you could at least sue or appeal to the government for relief from, you just have the rich and powerful running the government and there is no relief. Just because you institutionalize the government with power doesn't mean that it's going to be used the way you like it. And if it's not, what are you going to do? They can use guns against you. Rich people in a Libertarian society cannot.
Even the US was founded on pure Libertarianism.
Any society that does not treat ALL individuals equally is NOT Libertarian. The US was founded as a representative (for white, male landowners) democracy. That is NOT Libertarian. You're confusing laissez faire with Libertarian. Perhaps, economically, America was more Libertarian. However, socially, it never has been.
The religious wackos who left England (not for religious freedom from persecution, but religious freedom to persecute those around them) came and made the little towns they wanted. They had freedom of everything. Then they made rules. And more rules. Repeat until you have today's USA where you are a terrorist if you don't want to show ID to fly.
I can't argue with you there. You make a great point about why we need Libertarian ideals.
Nearly every tribal organization fit more into your Libertarian ideal than anything "government" like. And what's funny is that many tribes are socialist or libertarian, depending on how you look at them, yet you seem to be presenting those two as complete opposites.
Libertarian does not preclude social interdependence. That's perfectly acceptable and encouraged. It just can't be done at the point of a gun by government. That's the only issue with Socialism. Libertarian != Ayn Rand.
Absolute freedom and selfish hoarding is libertarian, and absolute freedom and sharing is socialist. The government is the same, just how those living under it act that determines whether it is libertarian or socialist. Libertarians are socialists that don't play well with others.
If government compels you, at the point of a gun, to do anything that does not respect you right to life, liberty or property, then it is not freedom. Ergo, socialism != free. And Libertarians are people that understand that you can't codify a bountiful society. It takes the voluntary cooperation of individuals... not diving people into groups and forcing one to provide for the other (depending on who is forcing and who is the forcee, you have either socialism or fascism... or even both).
But, back to the point, tribal societies can have zero real govenrment, rules appied only by peers on a case-by-case basis, and the "goverment" consists of one old person that mediates disputes. Of course, when that organization comes across someone demanding power, often it collapses because there are no checks against it. And then you have the end of your unsustainable ideal Libertarian Utopia.
Libertarianism != anarchy|monarchy|oligarchy. Libertarians believe in the rule of law. Disputes are settle in court and decided by judges and juries. Libertarians just apply simple criteria to the la
Slashdot Mirror
Are you going to vote for Barack Obama or are you a racist?
Fortunately, your comment is modded funny. Unfortunately, the polls indicate that the other side of the coin is a reality. I'm not criticizing any black person for doing that, given the history of this country and their people, but it doesn't change the fact that there are many black people that admit they are voting for him just because he's black. I'm not sure if that's a good thing for the advancement of black people or not.
Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.
Sadly, we'd probably be better served if most people did that. Most people aren't informed enough about anything of real consequence to have an opinion that is worth consideration. The Constitution has no right to vote. There's a reason for that.
There's only one poll that counts. And it wraps up polling next Tuesday. Keep in mind that during the primary, all the polls had Obama winning New Hampshire. The closest had him with a 5% lead. Don't be shocked if this is closer (or even in a completely different direction) than the media is reporting it.
They're selling drama. The polls are all over the place. Polls != election results.
The same thing would be said from someone else if something was posted as an "Independent Analysis" from Fox News. ALL media has bias. The difference is degree and direction. The GP is correct, though. The NYT does tend to slant to the left. I'd take a look at what FN & NYT both say and figure that the "truth" is somewhere in the middle.
Raise the minimum wage, prices rise with it. So, it will never be a living wage because when it goes up, so does the cost of living.
At the bottom of this first page of the report is a graph showing what "most" actually is, 70%. So only 30% of US corporations generally pay ANY tax in a given year according to the GAO.
So again, why shouldn't we be clamouring for rich people and corporations to be paying up like the rest of us?
I'm not familiar with the report, but I'm just curious as to how many of those corporations are S-corps. I've got an S-corp myself that I setup simply to invest in small homes that need refurbishing and resell them to low income people at below market rates to expand availability of housing for people that might not otherwise be able to afford something of their own. Sure, I do it for profit, but I've never made more than $40k in a year at it. By the time all of my related expenses are figured into it, I virtually had no income for the corporation.
Corporations aren't all big behemoths without a human face. Mine is made up of only me. And, I'll also let you know that my corporation has never paid taxes ever. It's not that I haven't sent checks to the government. I did. But, the taxes were included in the markup on the houses I sold. So, the poor people I was trying to help are actually the ones that paid the taxes. Do you think Wal-Mart or X (pick your favorite boogey man) corporation does it any differently? The "little" people always pay corporate tax. Raise the rates, the prices will rise to make up the difference. It might make you feel good, but you're not screwing who you think you are.
But, to go back to deductions, I'm all for eliminating them all. The reason that things are so screwed is because the government has tried to control people's behaviour through the tax code. The give breaks for what they want people to do and penalize what they don't want. Simplify it and make it where I don't need to spend 2 months with an accountant at tax time to get my paperwork done and I'd be happy. Just lower those rates to make it a net even. Then, we'll all actually know who's paying what.
perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.
gone are the days when logistical obstacles prevented the public from directly participating in the legislative process. there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
Great idea on the surface. Sounds all utopian. Unfortunately, if EVERYONE gets to decide on EVERYTHING, we're screwed. The founders weren't fools. They understood that the majority of people would not have the capacity to understand the intricacies of the issues at hand to make proper choices. Back then, it also wasn't practical. But, the fact is, that we live in a society today where over 40% of the people think the Republicans are in charge of Congress. People are not informed enough to be given that responsibility. We will literally be screwed if we ever do something as insane as this.
I'm all for it if there's some standard for who gets to vote and for what. Unfortunately, most people in the US are only informed enough to choose who's the American Idol winner... and he's about to be president-elect.
A lawyer who has 1) grown up on welfare, 2) has shown at least some interest in returning balance to income inequality which threatens our entire culture, and 3) will replace the Bush Administration with a cabinet full of something besides the Bush Administration.
If the ABA were under government oversight, you could pressure your congressperson to change the way it runs, or cut their funding. Since it has no governmental oversight, all you can do is bitch. That's the "freedom" of unregulated but necessary industry - they're free to extort money, you're free to waste your breath complaining about it.
Ok... I'll bite...
1. Not sure what that has to do with anything. Sure, he grew up on welfare. He lives in a $1M+ house now. According to the logic of people that like to play the class warfare game, you don't get to that place in life without screwing people. So, what makes him better than the other multimillionaire running just because he USED to be poor.
2. He's only talking about attacking a symptom. "Income inequality" is not the core problem of our culture. It comes from a lack of opportunity. That lack of opportunity exists in the form of a third rate government monopoly (remember Slashdotters... monopolies are bad... not just with corporations) on education. That problem is even worse in poorer rural and urban areas. Add to that the social influences that teach people that if you're successful you must have cheated because no one can get ahead without being corrupt. So, young children who need a positive message more than any are brainwashed at a very young age that the deck is stacked against them, so there's no point to even try to educate yourself and attempt to achieve something in life.
You can take all the money from the "rich" and give it to the "poor". Within 5 years, the people with money to begin with will have it all back and those that didn't won't have any once again. Poverty is a psychological problem. If the psychology is never dealt with, things will never change. People like to talk about the materialism of capitalists, but it's really the socialists and communists that obsess over material wealth much more than capitalists. It's because the entire psychology of those perspectives are rooted in victimization and envy.
3. I'm absolutely no fan of Bush or really anything that he's done in his time. I never voted for him. I haven't voted for a single Republican for any office since 1998. And, I actually voted for Obama in the primary election. Still, the perspective that ANYTHING is better is quite irresponsible. We don't know what either of these politicians (that's ALL they are) are going to do when they get their hands on the reins. We're going to see, though. And only time will tell if that's better or not.
And the comment about government oversight, we've seen plenty of times how that works. Those without the campaign donations get the oversight. Those with don't. Putting the government in control is little better than just putting some corporation in control. Sure, you can argue that the government is accountable to the people. That's a wonderful theory, but not so effective in practice. In the end, the government is just another corporation run by a few elites. They allow us to have the illusion that we have influence, but when they want to do something, they can do it anyway. The real issue is that they can use guns to make you comply and you can't do anything about it.
- conspiracy to commit murder (since you discussed with all of us and presumably none of us called the police)
No. I called. They're wanting everyone else here on conspiracy charges too.
There is no question that we are having SOME effect. The real question is how much, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
So to correct your earlier statement, it would be safe to say that the Cult of Al Gore is to the left what ID is to the right; global warming as a scientific field of study, though, has nothing in common with either. The fact that some political groups have hijacked the name, doesn't invalidate the science.
Well said... I won't even deal with the ID folks because it's not even worth commenting on. As for the Cult of Al Gore, they do a great disservice to people that are truly trying to understand the climate because they are arguing that there is already scientific "consensus" (which I never learned about when I was studying the scientific method) that man is causing all the change. The problem is, when you take the data from Al Gore's film that he presented that correlated temperature change and atmospheric CO2 percentages and actually put them on the same graph (instead of breaking them into 2 like Al did), you'll actually see that the increase in temperature PRECEEDS the rise in CO2. So, though there does definitely seem to be a correlation, the conclusion drawn by Al and his "church" seems to be false simply by looking at the data.
BTW... I'm not saying that CO2 isn't involved in the whole process of climate change. I'm just saying that anyone that has a real understanding of science would be horrified to think that we would be thinking about monkeying about with things without having a better understanding. Do we need to clean up our act? Hell yes. Are we effecting things? Chaos theory would say so. Do we know how much and in what way we're having an effect? I've yet to see anything that really can tell me that this is definitely not a cyclical phenomenon and is mostly a byproduct of human activity.
The problem is the chicken littles screaming the sky is falling because their computer models say the Earth is about to burst into flames (or whatever the catastrophy du jour happens to be). That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
Uh...guys? It's not who's freer, US or UK that varies, it's that both are going down the toilet quickly freedom wise.
Terrorism? I'm far more scared of the government.
I hear this a lot from the Slashdot crowd when it comes to information privacy and government misuse of information. It puzzles me, though, that many of the same people (not necessarily indicting parent here) fight and argue for expansion of government influence. One thing I'm specifically thinking of is government run health care. I'm just curious as to what these same people that argue against the patriot act think the government is going to do differently when they own their medical records.
Did they attempt to see if it still worked if the mice were wearing sunglasses?
You do what you can via modelling etc to try and predict the effects of any potential intervention. Then you try it on a limited scale, and try to confirm your models. If it seems good, you scale it up.
Great idea! We definitely need to model these things to understand what is going to happen first.
BTW... call me when the Weather Channel can actually give me an accurate forecast for next week. Then we can start working on a model that could be relied on to analyze the next decade.
The real problem is the business of the process.
There is too great an incentive for companies to dream up potentially damaging and idiotic ideas in order to secure lucrative government contracts to carry them out. The company then makes a large profit from screwing with the environment in a big way.
It's the same mechanism that results in companies having an incentive to push the country into war; massive mega-contracts that result in huge gains to that company at the severe detriment of everyone else.
Huge dollars going into mega projects like carbon sequestering attract morally bankrupt companies like Bechtel, companies who would strip mine the entire Amazon if they could make it profitable. They put together a reasonable sounding proposal, submit it to the bumbling idiots who call themselves our leaders along with a fat bribe and then go about reaping enormous profit using our tax dollars to fuck up the planet.
There are few things that anger me more than the privatization of social responsibility.
If it's government contracts, it's not privatization. It's outsourcing. Privatization would be the government removing itself from the whole process and leaving it to the market to deal with it.
While it might not be dealt with any better under privatization, you most likely wouldn't have schemesters getting big bucks from "bumbling idiots" in that case. Generally, only government can waste billions on those types of idiotic ideas. The market is too worried about profit.
Of course they do. You, personally, might not have voted for the incomptents that are pushing for this sort of thing/not actively working to make it illegal... But many of your peers did.
I'd say that in at LEAST 2/3rds of the conversations I've ever had with Americans about the 2nd amendment, they bring up the idea that a well armed populace will keep the government from doing illegal things, because the populace will call them to account. I'm not suggesting that shooting people is the appropriate response to luggage being stolen, but I've never once gotten a satisfactory answer as to what will cause the people to rise up. It seems to me that the ability to own shitloads of guns hasn't been used very effectively over the history of the USA to enforce the constitution or the rights of human beings. It still might in the future, but I'm not optimistic. As long as American Idol is still playing, and Walmart is still selling clothes for cheap, the vast majority of the American people seem unwilling to risk their own comfortable lives over things like the contitution, their rights or more particularly, the rights of others.
The thing is, we don't have to start a bloody revolution to change things. The ENTIRE House of Representatives is up for election every two years. All budget bills must originate from the house. So, no money = no enforcement of whatever even if the Senate, Executive and Judicial branches disagree.
The problem is that everyone thinks all of congress is a bunch of criminals except for "their" guy. So, we keep sending the jerks back so we can keep watching American Idol...
I think it's ignorant and rude for you to suggest that liberals don't work as hard as conservatives, or don't love America as much. How do you know how hard I work? And how can you possibly see into my heart and tell me how much I love America? The fact is, you're simply spouting stereotypes that reflect your political bias.
You're correct there. It has nothing to do with the value you create personally in the economy. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, while making plenty of money and generating jobs upon jobs are still fairly liberal in their politics.
Yes. You are crazy. Ever hear of the Butterfly Ballot. If American voters can't handle making a single choice, how are they going to deal with multiple choices?
Well, given that I live in California, for my senator anyway, I am represented as 1 out of about 18 million. How much representation do you expect a single citizen to get? If you have neither money nor the capability to inspire people, then enjoy your 1 in 18 million representation.
Actually, the original intent of the founders was that the Senate was to represent the state governments, not directly the people of the state. They were actually chosen by the state legislators until the 17th Amendment. That's why there was an even number allocated to each state regardless of population. The House of Representatives was supposed to be the people's representative body. And, if you run the numbers there, you'll find that each member of the house represents ~ 600-700k people since house delegations are appropriated by population. Still not a great number, but when you understand the original intent of the founders, it makes more sense. Of course, Americans don't understand much about the original intent of the founders (or anything else that doesn't involve the entertainment industry). So, they think we're supposed to directly vote for any elected official, damn the state governments and the 10th Amendment.
No, let's be fair. The blame is with those who voted them in.
I didn't vote for Bush in 2004, nor did I vote for Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) in 2006. What should I have done, other than vote for other candidates and encourage friends and family members to do the same?
Which illustrates the fundamental problem with a simple democracy... In an autocracy, you essentially have a ruler or small ruling class that becomes the tyrant. With democracy, it's the tyranny of the majority.
I'm not arguing in favor of either. What we really need is a reform of the election process. Instead of everyone selecting just one candidate that they want with the one receiving the majority of votes winning, we need to have a forced ranking system. There, voters would rank all the candidates in the order of most preferred to least preferred. The highest (or lowest depending on the system) average of voter rankings would then be elected to office.
That really gets to the true issue that we have in the US, which is the tyranny of the 2 party system. The Democans and Republicrats have a duopoly on the system, which forces the winner to be either someone that you really want or someone that you really don't want.
Of course, it's all just another pipe dream since our voters can't even deal with basic ballots like the infamous "Butterfly Ballot."
My smoking of weed while watching said movie also harms no one. It only harms me, and it's my body, therefore my choice how I treat it.
WRONG!!! Because it makes people actually enjoy watching crap like Clone Wars, thus more crap is produced. Drugs are destroying the entertainment industry and I certainly hope this new Copyright Czar will join forces with the Drug Czar to save Hollywood and the poor record companies being plagued by this scourge.
Large diesel transfer trucks use air brakes, which are charged by a compressor that is run by the engine. Using the brakes discharges the stored air. If the compressor is not powerful enough and the brakes are used too much, the pressure will drop resulting in a loss of braking power. A compressed air braking system will still be subject to issues of heating the rotors, but the air pressure has to also be maintained to keep the brakes working. Otherwise, why would they need low air pressure warnings on trucks with those systems?
Diesels specifically do it for longevity and safety when going down steep hills, as well.
The big ones also do it because there's only so much air stored up for air braking. You don't want to waste it in case you really need it in an emergency.
First they find the monogomy gene and then they find the baldness gene. How much longer before women insist on genetic pre-screening before they put out?
Don't forget the monogamy gene...
It helps tremendously, of course, that Smallville is as popular a TV show as it is these days.
Men, do not fear the razor. The Gillete Mach 3 is your friend.
I'm not balding, but I think I'd go The Apprentice route with the comb-over.
Every government was an attempt at it.
So, you're saying the Bolsheviks intended to create a Libertarian society? Communism is nowhere near Libertarianism.
The problem with Libertarian is that it is too free. That leaves a weak government and a lot of rich/powerful people that want control without controls against them. Then they take over. Then the Libertarian government fails.
Too free? So, you're arguing for a strong government, which if I'm correct, history has illustrated only grows in strength until it reaches totalitarianism. I'd much rather have a government that failed than one that could never fail. Because, if it can fail, the people running it know that. Then instead of rich and powerful people that you could at least sue or appeal to the government for relief from, you just have the rich and powerful running the government and there is no relief. Just because you institutionalize the government with power doesn't mean that it's going to be used the way you like it. And if it's not, what are you going to do? They can use guns against you. Rich people in a Libertarian society cannot.
Even the US was founded on pure Libertarianism.
Any society that does not treat ALL individuals equally is NOT Libertarian. The US was founded as a representative (for white, male landowners) democracy. That is NOT Libertarian. You're confusing laissez faire with Libertarian. Perhaps, economically, America was more Libertarian. However, socially, it never has been.
The religious wackos who left England (not for religious freedom from persecution, but religious freedom to persecute those around them) came and made the little towns they wanted. They had freedom of everything. Then they made rules. And more rules. Repeat until you have today's USA where you are a terrorist if you don't want to show ID to fly.
I can't argue with you there. You make a great point about why we need Libertarian ideals.
Nearly every tribal organization fit more into your Libertarian ideal than anything "government" like. And what's funny is that many tribes are socialist or libertarian, depending on how you look at them, yet you seem to be presenting those two as complete opposites.
Libertarian does not preclude social interdependence. That's perfectly acceptable and encouraged. It just can't be done at the point of a gun by government. That's the only issue with Socialism. Libertarian != Ayn Rand.
Absolute freedom and selfish hoarding is libertarian, and absolute freedom and sharing is socialist. The government is the same, just how those living under it act that determines whether it is libertarian or socialist. Libertarians are socialists that don't play well with others.
If government compels you, at the point of a gun, to do anything that does not respect you right to life, liberty or property, then it is not freedom. Ergo, socialism != free. And Libertarians are people that understand that you can't codify a bountiful society. It takes the voluntary cooperation of individuals... not diving people into groups and forcing one to provide for the other (depending on who is forcing and who is the forcee, you have either socialism or fascism... or even both).
But, back to the point, tribal societies can have zero real govenrment, rules appied only by peers on a case-by-case basis, and the "goverment" consists of one old person that mediates disputes. Of course, when that organization comes across someone demanding power, often it collapses because there are no checks against it. And then you have the end of your unsustainable ideal Libertarian Utopia.
Libertarianism != anarchy|monarchy|oligarchy. Libertarians believe in the rule of law. Disputes are settle in court and decided by judges and juries. Libertarians just apply simple criteria to the la